A Taliban commander told CBS News' Sami Yousafzai Thursday that militants had captured one U.S. soldier and three Afghan nationals in Paktika province, near the Pakistani border.
A U.S. military spokesperson in Kabul confirms that one soldier has been missing in Afghanistan since June 30.
Cpt. Elizabeth Mathias told CBS News Thursday, "a U.S. serviceman has been missing in Afghanistan since 30th June, it's believed the service person is being held by insurgents."
The Taliban commander, who spoke to Yousafzai via satellite telephone from the region, said a group of militants cornered the American soldier and his Afghan counterparts near a U.S. military base and took them hostage.
He said the captives' fate would be decided by Taliban leaders, but that the Islamic extremist group "would not mind an exchange of prisoners in this case."
Paktika province sits along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. The kidnapping comes just as some 4,000 U.S. Marines begin a massive offensive operation in the southern Helmand province to clear the Taliban stronghold of militants.
No further information was provided by the military on the identity of the soldier who is missing, or where the individual was based.
GlobalSecurity.org reports that the U.S. military operates a Forward Operating Base in Paktika called Orgun-E, which "dramatically expanded in size" in recent years.
Prior to the expansion, the base was home to about 400 U.S. soldiers in 2003, according to GlobalSecurity's information. Orgun-E is said to be one of about a half-dozen such Forward Operating Bases maintained by the U.S. military along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border with Pakistan.
Photo: U.S. Marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Battalion walk through the sand inside Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan's Helmand province in this June 8, 2009 file photo. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
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